


something my soul needs

by tarteaucitron



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Canon Timeline, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 21:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1757761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarteaucitron/pseuds/tarteaucitron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We’re leaving Roarton in a stolen car and I’m in the backseat with Simon. I don’t know what to say to him. His hand’s on the seat next to me, smothered in cover-up. I can’t tell if I want to touch it. I feel like a stuffed animal and I can’t say anything because the stuffing’s all the way up to my throat and in my head, but I can feel him looking at me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something my soul needs

**Author's Note:**

> A breather set after episode 5, and mostly to relieve my feelings before the series finale.

There’s two people staring down from the painting on the living room wall, but I’m not sure who either of them are any more. One of them looks like me and one of them looks like Dad, but the more I look the more their faces peel apart into broad slaps of colour. Nope, not us. Not me and Dad. Copies of who we used to be, Simon would say with a totally straight face. And he’s right – we’re different people entirely now.

The letterbox squeaks on the half-hour.

“You in there?”

I have to take a breath. “Yes, Dean. I’m still here. You out there?”

“Yep.”

It snaps shut again. Now he’ll trudge up to the top of the drive and scowl at Mum’s buddleia for a good fifteen minutes. I’m not waiting here. I get up off the sofa and leave by the back door without bothering to check.

It’s stupid to go to the station – if I wasn’t getting a ticket before, I’m certainly not getting one now – but that’s where I find myself. Leaning against the Roarton sign that someone’s defaced now. Rot-ton, it says, which is a different breed of ignorance altogether. It’s starting to snow again. A flake lands on my cheek and sits there till a gust of wind blows it away. I shuffle the weight of the little blue bottle between my fingers in my pocket and let Simon drift about uselessly in my head. Have they taken him away yet? How would I even know? Beyond the platform the track goes straight for a mile or so and you can look up it and imagine the possibility of somewhere that’s not the house I’ve been prisoner in and not Norfolk. I wonder what it looks like.

God, do any trains actually ever come through this station? I’m trying to think if I’ve seen one since Amy left in the spring. Perhaps they’ve silently disappeared along with our collective sanity. We’re living on the moon. Cars are driving by on the road behind me, but everything’s getting quieter because of the snow.

“Hiya, handsome.”

"Amy?" She’s hanging over the fence. I didn’t hear her coming. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be talking to me.”

She spreads her arms out wide. “I’ve come to take you away from all this.”

“Ha ha.” I turn back and look at my feet. “To be honest, I just want to be on my own out here for a bit.” My feet. They’ve got a few more hours in these boots surely, before the soft white shoes.

“Kieren.” She sounds serious. I want her to go, but I want her to stay, too, and talk to me about rubbish. Why can’t I think of anything rubbish to say?

“What do you think they dress you in in the non-compliance centre?”

“I don’t know.” She’s round the fence, and sitting next to me. Her hand pulls mine out of my pocket, and I just remember to let go of the little bottle. “Kieren. He came back.”

I look at her to see what she means. She’s smiling a little, with her lips pressed together.

“From? From the centre?”

“No, Dumb-dumb. He didn’t go to the centre. They didn’t get him.” She gets up from the bench, pulling at my hand. “Come on.”

I follow her, tripping a bit when my feet don’t move at first. I still don’t understand.

Outside the station a car’s parked. A green strip on the windscreen says “Freddie... Hayley”, and Philip’s frowning out from behind it. His hands are clamped on the steering wheel. In the backseat Simon has his head down. His brows are resting against the chunk of his palms. When we get closer he looks up and sees us, then stares outright. We just stare at each other. He has his contacts in.

Philip leans across the front seat and opens the passenger door.

“Come on!” he hisses.

~

We’re leaving Roarton in a stolen car and I’m in the backseat with Simon. I don’t know what to say to him. His hand’s on the seat next to me, smothered in cover-up. I can’t tell if I want to touch it. I feel like a stuffed animal and I can’t say anything because the stuffing’s all the way up to my throat and in my head, but I can feel him looking at me.

~

Philip drives up the M6 in the slow lane, like a pensioner.

“Where did you get it?”

He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror then looks back at the road. His hands are at ten-to-two. “Parish council impounded it after Freddie got sent away. They didn’t get round to taking my keys away.” His eyes flick up again. “With everything that happened.” 

Amy twists round in her seat. “It’s what he would’ve wanted.”

“I know for a fact it isn’t.”

“Well anyway. Philip’s a genius, and he’s saved us all.”

I mouth at her – _what’s going on?_ She just smiles serenely and does her mysterious look. She’s obviously shagging him. I can’t imagine how it happened, and frankly I don’t want to.

~

Philip the genius has to pull into the services at Lancaster to go to the loo.

We don’t say anything for a minute or two after he’s gone. I’m watching the family in the next car eating a packed lunch. We used to do that – park up at the welcome break and hand out ham sandwiches. It didn’t seem weird when we did it. Nothing seems weird, I suppose, before you’ve learnt how other people do things.

Eventually Amy clears her throat. “Right then, lovebirds.” To my right, Simon visibly flinches. “I’m going to powder my nose.”

Jesus, Amy.

“She knows, by the way,” I say, when she’s halfway across the car park. “In case you were in any doubt.”

Simon says nothing. The side of his mouth turns up. This was what we agreed on – that she had to know. If I leant towards him now he’d kiss me, I think. I can see it in his face. He looks sad.

He doesn’t pick up on my opener. Instead he says, “Are you all right?”

Of all the – “Am I _all right?_ ” So I think, okay then, and I tell him how actually furious I am. He looks steadily at me out of his weird made-up face while I tell him about how I’ve been kicked out of my own family, but locked in with them at the same time, relentlessly humiliated by Roarton Parish Council. “And I thought they’d got you. I thought you were chained up in Norfolk with Freddie and all the other poor buggers who hoped for any sort of future. And I thought you’d done it on purpose!”

God, I am so angry. I am so fucking relieved that he’s here, not in Norfolk, but I want to hit him. I’m shaking a bit.

Simon looks down, away. He rubs a hand against his trousers and clears his throat a couple of times. “It might be for the best if I do go back.” He says it so quietly that I could easily pretend I hadn’t heard, but I don’t.

“Really. For the best? You – fine. I have no idea. You just –” 

I can’t stay and look at him, so I get out of the car and slam the door. Amy’s loitering outside the service station. I march up to her and lean against the wall. My head thumps back against the plate glass, and it wobbles in its seals.

“God!”

“I know. He’s been moping around like that since he came back. I had to rescue you just to give him something to cheer up about.”

“Well. Here I am, and he’s still moping around.”

“You’ll think of something, handsome.” She pats my cheek, but I’m really not in the mood. “You may be my treacherous ex-fiancés, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to be happy.”

“Thanks, I suppose. But I don’t think we’re meant to be happy. I don’t think we’re happy people.”

“Positive mental attitude.” She’s prodding me. “Follow my example. Expect the best and the best things will come to you.”

“The best things? Like a trip up the M6 with a car thief?”

She laughs. She does genuinely look happy. “He thinks of everything. You know he used to be troop leader for cub scouts?”

“Yes, Amy, I do know. He was an officious git then, too. Maybe a bit more upstanding, though.”

I can see her hearing it and choosing to ignore me. “Ideal leadership material! He’s booked us into a little B&B.”

“A B&B? Amy, are you mental? We’re probably on some wanted list. They’ll see us skipping breakfast and we’ll be arrested.”

“Philip will be our cover. He’ll check us in, keep us safe. Our knight with a shining pulse. Anyway, when do I have to stop telling you to _live a little_ , Kieren Walker? You don’t have to wait for all those little stamps on your give-back cards, you know. I’m going to make sure you get a donkey ride.”

That makes me laugh. “You _are_ mental. What are you doing with Philip anyway? I thought you hated him.”

She looks at me from under her lashes, and I can’t help smiling. “Well. He gave a little speech. Would have turned any girl’s head. Said how he was in love with me all along, of course.”

“Of course.”

Across the car park, Simon’s got out. He’s looking around, a little bit jerky and quick, one hand gripping the car door, but as if he wants to take off, and I think he must be looking for us. I give a little wave and he sees it and stills. After a moment or two, he raises a hand – nothing committal – and gets back in the car.

Philip comes out of the service station then, drying his hands on a paper towel. “Do you know what kind of petrol that car takes?”

He’s looking at me. “Er... _no?_ How would I know? I never even learnt to drive.”

“Right. We’ll try unleaded.”

~

We wait in the car while Philip checks us into the place just outside Carnforth. It doesn’t look like much from the outside – a mid-terrace with an extra porch and ridiculous pillars built on. It’s bigger on the inside, knocked through into next door, and I can imagine Dad shaking his head about planning permission.

Philip leads us upstairs to where the owner showed him.

“Two rooms.” Amy nudges me, dangling a key. “Don’t get too busy, lovebirds. We’re going to the pub in half an hour. Patronise the local establishments.”

“Is that a good idea?” 

“Oh don’t worry. it’s very cool round here. Very cosmopolitan. Philip’s done his research.”

Philip gives her a shy smile. “Carnforth Town Council haven’t adopted the give-back scheme. Police have been working with grassroots action groups on some anti-hate crime policies.”

“See? As long as they don’t extradite us back to Boreton, we’ll be fine.”

I roll my eyes as hard as I can at her, but take the key. 

Our room is aggressively mauve. Mauve cushions and bedlinen, pale violet wallpaper with tiny yellow flowers. Someone’s even found a mauve remote control for the television. The bed is narrow, barely a double, and leaning up against the pillows is a purple teddy bear.

Somewhere another Kieren is settling into this room with another Simon, and laughing at that teddy bear. As soon as the door closes on us, though, I’m too depressed to laugh.

Simon sits on the end of the bed and looks up at me expectantly. Fine, I’ll start.

“Those people at the doctors – that receptionist. Did you do it?”

“Kieren, I’m sorry. I am. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t even sound like he’s answering my question – away on some agenda of his own. Bloody Simon. And he looks so upset that I just want to shake him. Because, fuck, why _should_ I feel sorry for him?

“ _Did_ you do it?”

“No. No, I didn’t do it. Would you just – _sit?_ ”

I won’t sit next to him on the bed. I want to, not just because I think it would make us both feel better, but because i am exhausted. I don’t, though. “Then why did you go?”

“I can’t –” He takes a deep breath and rubs his hands together. “I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry.”

“Great. No, that’s great. Once upon a time you were all about honesty and _who we really are_ –” I don’t feel bad about my air-quotes “– and now you’re all secrets and _sorry_ and... why _are_ you wearing cover-up mousse?”

“I don’t think I’m all anything.” His voice is gentle. “You need to be safe. You made me see –”

“That’s bullshit. _You_ made _me_ see. Here I am standing here, bare-faced, being who I really am. Just like you said. No shame, remember? My sister –” The stuffing creeps up into my throat again, and I swallow it down. “– My sister can’t even look at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No! Don’t be sorry. Just. Just take it off.”

He didn’t bring any remover with him, so he’s in the bathroom for a good few minutes scrubbing away with the tiny mauve bar of soap. I do sit on the bed then, and an ache starts up in my stomach that tells me better than any watch that it’s getting on for five o’clock.

“Is that better?”

I look up at him. Without the cover-up I can see him so much clearer. His eyes are pale again and hopeful. A sudden tender feeling rises back up in me.

“Marginally,” I say, but I know there’s more kindness in my voice.

He sits next to me, but keeps his hands to himself. “I don’t want to hurt you, Kieren,” he says.

“Then don’t.”

“No.” He looks at me and smiles. “No.”

“Simon?” I say. I don’t want to ask him, but I haven’t got much choice. “It’s time for my dose. Have you got your –?”

“You don’t have yours?”

“I was sort of kidnapped. It didn’t leave much time for packing.”

“Amy’s got the licensed stuff.” He thumbs next door. “I’ll just –”

He comes back with the syringe and I let him do it. He pulls down the neck of my t-shirt so carefully. I can feel the faintest sensation of something brushing over the hole in my spine, and when the shock of the drug snaps through me, he holds onto me. His fingers grip firmly on the ball of my shoulder.

“All right,” he says, like he’s soothing a toddler.

When the pain’s died down, I realise he’s still holding on and I think then that he’ll try to touch me more or turn me around and kiss me, but he doesn’t. I can hear him breathing behind me. He’s frightened of something. Waiting for me to ask for it.

~

Amy’s Neurotriptyline Plus knocked me out completely. I haven’t slept like that since I was fifteen. As I woke up I could feel myself pulling out of a dream. It wasn’t a happy one, but it wasn’t a flashback either, and it’s gone now. Simon was in the purple armchair when I woke up and his eyes were closed. I don’t even know if he came to bed. When I sat up he looked at me and smiled and said, “Morning, lazybones.”

Carnforth isn’t a big place but it’s a couple of miles to the beach at Bolton, so we drive. Amy drives, that is. We come out of the B&B, me and Simon, and she’s sitting there under the Freddie side of the green strip, and Philip’s beside her, parka done up to the chin, looking worried.

We pogo along for a bit and everyone’s clinging on to the seat in front – or the dashboard – and then she gets the hang of it.

“There we are – like riding a bike! What did I tell you?”

I look at Simon and he looks at me. There’s a flicker in his jaw like he’s holding his back teeth together. I nearly laugh. Philip’s still holding onto the door handle, but a bit less obviously now. “Actually in several fundamental ways, it’s not like riding a bike,” he says. 

There’s no beachfront car park here, so we have to leave the car on a side street. Philip sits through three goes at parallel parking before he offers to do it himself.

The beach is huge and grey. It must be at least a mile down to the sea. Amy strides forwards regardless, then stops dead. The wind is throwing her skirt around.

“Where is everybody?”

“Amy, it’s December and it’s Lancashire. You can’t seriously have been expecting donkeys. It’s not even that sort of beach.”

“Well it’s not the sort of beach where you moon around feeling sorry for yourself and reflecting on your woes either. Philip, car keys.”

He gives them to her and she’s off again. I give Philip a look and he shrugs.

Simon’s walked off a little way up the beach, and we start to follow him. Philip digs his hands deep into the pockets of his parka. He must be freezing, but he’s happy enough to trudge on next to me apparently.

“What happened, Phil? You had a glittering career in village politics ahead of you. Why are you stealing cars and running away with rotters?”

“Gave up politics.”

“But why?”

He purses his lips and doesn’t answer for a few seconds. “Henry Lonsdale.”

“Henry? Do you know where he is?”

“No. Maxine Martin tried to get me to lie to his mum. I was supposed to say he was in a training camp, planning attacks. Stir people up.”

“Jesus christ. Is that what she’s doing now?”

A sudden fear hits me – I feel like I’ve been scooped out in the middle. I wonder what she’s saying to Mum and Dad. And Jem. Maybe that I’m in a training camp, too. That I’m going around as a rabid. Christ, they might even believe it. I put my hand in my pocket and my fingers knock against the bottle of blue oblivion. I feel sick.

Philip interrupts my panic. “Then there was the brothel.”

“Sorry?”

“They found out I was going to the PDS brothel. There was a sex worker who looked like Amy –”

“Nope! Okay. Thanks, Phil.” I speed up. “Simon, wait for us!” Simon turns around to face us and starts walking backwards.

“We mostly just watched dvds –!”

We sit and wait for Amy, Simon and me with our arms pressed together and Philip a foot away and shivering. We’ve walked a little way, but the sea is still far off, grey and motionless, across the hard-packed ripples of sand. I take my boots and socks off on a whim and push my toes into the sand. The water seeps up and leaves little clods like mud on my grey skin. I see Simon looking, and he sees me seeing him. He reaches a hand down slowly and runs his thumb over the nut of my ankle.

When Amy comes back she’s got a guitar with her. “Right, Mister Monroe. I don’t know about everyone else, but I think it’s high time we had a bit of serenading. I’m sure Kieren here agrees with me.”

“What?”

“Oh no!” Simon’s stumbling up to his feet, holding out his hand to ward off the guitar. This is priceless.

“Wait –” I get up too. “you play the guitar? Oh – this I want to hear. What kind of music?”

“All sorts. He’s very versatile. Come on Simon. Don’t be shy.”

“No one’s playing any guitars.”

Amy throws her free arm around my shoulder. “Look at Kieren’s little face.” She squashes her knuckles against my cheek. “He wants to hear some of your beautiful singing.” 

“You sing?” I’m goggling at him.

“How could you disappoint that?”

I do my best to make a pleading face, and for a moment Simon actually seems to hesitate. Then he reaches out a hand and pulls me away from Amy.

“Come on. Let’s go for a paddle.”

“Later, then?” Amy shouts after us. “Wait!”

Simon pulls me all the way to the edge of the sea, and only lets go of my hand then to pull his shoes and socks off and roll up his trousers. He chucks his shoes over his shoulder and I laugh at him. I feel a bit giddy.

“Wait, you two.” Amy’s struggling up, buffeted in the wind. Her hair’s all over her face.

“No Philip?” Simon says.

“No. Bit chilly for him. He’s terribly sensitive.” She starts pulling off her boots. “He’s looking after the guitar.” Down the beach, Philip lifts the guitar a bit in a sort of salute. Amy blows a kiss.

Simon has hold of my hand again. He meets my eye and I grin at him. “Are we going for this paddle then, or what?”

We walk into the sea and I can feel the water pushing and swaying against my feet. It’s probably arctic. I remember a time when we went to Lytham in low season before Jem was born, and Dad and me hopping and gasping at the edge of the water. He picked me up and lowered me so just the soles of my feet touched the water, and we both laughed when my legs sprang back up like a frog’s. It was a game.

I remember that cold and even though I can’t feel it in my skin, it’s almost as if I can feel it in my bones, like a memory of how freezing it was. Simon makes no concessions to memory, though, and pulls us along so the water splashes up our shins.

Behind us, I hear Amy gasp. She’s standing at the edge, just her toes in and the soles of her feet. She looks uncertain for a moment, then looks up and smiles.

“You all right?” I say.

“Yes. Don’t want to ruin my gorgeous dress. You two go on. Don’t do anything indecent. I _will_ call the police.”

“Okay?” Simon asks me. He’s got that look on his face that I haven’t seen since he went away – something purposeful and a bit hungry. I nod at him, feeling fluttery.

The sea deepens slowly, and we push on until it’s over our knees and soaking into our trousers. I tell him to stop then, and he does. He turns back to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. We kiss, pushing against each other. I feel relief expanding inside me, and I'm furiously on edge at the same time. It makes me kiss him harder, and his hands catch at my neck and waist. The tide sucks at us and we stumble a bit for our footing.

When the kiss ends, Simon holds onto my face with careful hands and tells me he missed me.

“Well there’s an easy solution to that,” I say, and I lift my head to kiss him again.

The wind blows on the side of my face, and I can hear snatches of something discordant. Back on the beach Amy and Philip are sitting huddled together over the guitar, and Philip is plucking awkwardly at the strings. Amy arranges his fingers.

We wade back eventually, and in the end Amy does persuade Simon to play the guitar. I laugh at him for a bit, until it stops being funny and just starts being soothing.

The sun is setting now and the sea’s getting closer to shore. I’ve suddenly remembered something I once knew about this beach. Years ago some illegal cocklers died around the curve of the bay. I remember it now from the news. They got driven here in vans and left to get on, until the sea came in and washed them away and they died of cold. It was horrible. They were Chinese, I think, so the news programmes never bothered with their names. Just twenty-one Chinese people. I was around thirteen then, and I haven’t thought about it since, till now. 2004 or 2005 – years too early for the Rising.

~

When we get back to the B&B Simon gives me my shot again, and this time he does kiss me. We kiss for ages, like it’s an end in itself – like I used to with Rick – until there’s a knock on the door and a strident throat-clearing.

I don’t fall straight to sleep tonight, and later there is time for us to take each other’s clothes off. I haven’t seen his long pale body before and it’s so entirely gorgeous that I feel drunk. The ragged seam down his back fits my fingers when he lies on top of me. I ask him what it is, but my voice is catching and breathless and he buries his face down further against my neck instead of answering.

I wondered how this would feel, what we could do. I even felt a bit jealous of what might be going on next door. What I feel, though, when Simon touches my face or the skin near my underarm is a sort of desperation, an urging – the same, exactly the same – an action I can’t seem to complete. All those precious neurons shutting down into a minute focus. I want to move against him, climb inside him, rough enough to scratch an unfelt itch. It’s no different at all. He whispers to me about what he’d do, and who I am to him, and his eyes are full and frantic, the same as I feel. Exactly the same.

When I feel sleep coming, he is touching my hair, and it’s like a prickling in my scalp. A sense memory. I close my eyes and feel his mouth against my temple.

~

I woke up from a dream again this morning. This time I remember bits. I was far out in the sea. It was up to my waist and pulling me further and further from the shore. Dad was standing on the beach, and when I reached out a hand towards him I saw it was spattered in black bile.

Simon’s still asleep with a frown on his face. I get up carefully, and if he wakes it’s only for an instant.

There’s a phonebox down the street just before you get to the pub. It’s covered in rape counselling stickers and posters for terrible club nights. There’s graffiti too, but it’s mostly about who’s shagging who rather than who’s tearing whose head open. When the call connects, it’s Jem who picks up.

“Is that you?” she says, and I am suddenly infinitely homesick.

She tells me that Dad didn’t go to work yesterday. Mum had him sticking raffle tickets on bottles, just to keep him busy.

“They’re scared,” she says.

“I know. I know they’re scared of me.” It makes me nauseous to think about it.

“It’s not you they’re scared of, Kier. Not what you are, I mean.” And I flinch at the ‘what’. “It’s what you might do. You start behaving different and they get paranoid – what do you expect?”

“They think I’m going rabid.”

“Are you listening to what I’m saying? No. They don’t think you’re going rabid. They think you’re going – like before.”

“But we talked about that. They know I’m not going to – Jesus Christ, are we going to have to go through this twice a year for the rest of –”

“Probably, yes.”

Neither of us says anything for a bit.

“If it’s about that, then why try and make me go back to the centre?”

“I don’t know. You can’t do much to yourself if there’s nothing sharp about.” Her breath rustles down the line. “Sorry. They’re worried about you, that’s all.”

“They’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

“Dad’s got a funny way of showing everything.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

I pick at a faded purple sticker on the window of the phonebox. “Are you frightened of me?”

“Yes.”

I can’t speak.

“I’m frightened of everything, Kier. I’m frightened of the guy in the supermarket. It’s all going to shit. Gary told me they’ve been planting blue oblivion on people so they can call them non-compliants.”

As much as I’ve ever wanted to harm anyone, I want to harm Gary. I wonder if that would come across as frightening.

“I’ve broken up with him.”

“I can’t really say I’m sorry, Jem.”

“No.” There’s a rattle and a shiver in her breathing now. I’ve got to go home.

~

Simon looks distraught when I tell him. He grabs onto my arm, and says he doesn’t want me to get hurt.

“No, Simon, I got it wrong. They need me.”

“I can’t go back with you.”

“Er, yeah,” I say. “Yeah, you can. Because _I_ need _you_.”

There’s some sort of Blitz spirit that comes over us as we drive home. Amy suggests that we sing some wartime songs. We don’t, but I joke to Simon that if they take us, at least they might take us both together.

He’s holding my hand so tight I think I can feel the bones moving.


End file.
